Landfills

Although the EPA reports that
approximately 33% of municipal waste is
recycled, municipal waste makes up only a small
portion of all waste generated. These waste
statistics also leave out waste that is burned
or land filled in unpermitted landfills and
incinerators, like burn barrels.16

The barriers of all landfills will
eventually break down and leak leachate into
ground and surface water. Plastics are not
inert, and many landfill liners and plastic
pipes allow chemicals and gases to pass through
while still intact.

Newer, lined landfills leak in narrow
plumes, making leaks only detectable if they
reach landfill monitoring wells. Both old and
new landfills are usually located near large
bodies of water, making detection of leaks and
their cleanup difficult.

Incinerators are a major source of 210
different dioxin compounds, plus mercury,
cadmium, nitrous oxide, hydrogen chloride,
sulfuric acid, fluorides, and particulate
matter small enough to lodge permanently in the
lungs.

In 2007, the EPA acknowledged that despite
recent tightening of emission standards for
waste incineration power plants, the
waste-to-energy process still “create
significant emissions, including trace amounts
of hazardous air pollutants.”

Only 30% of people in the Southern region
of the United States had curbside recycling
collection in 2008. Eighty-four percent of
people in the Northeast had curbside
recycling. The South also has the most
landfill facilities – 726, in contrast with
134 in the northeast.

In 1960, each person in the US only
generated 2.68 pounds of waste. In 1970, the
figure was 3.25. However, Americans’ recycling
has improved since 2000, when the average
American generated 4.65 lbs of waste per day,
and only 29% was recycled. Also, in 1980, 89%
of Americans’ waste went to a landfill, while
only 54% met that fate in 2008.

While landfill gas is a good fuel, most
landfills are not efficiently collecting it.
The EPA estimates 75% gas collection
efficiency, but some landfills are as low as 9
percent. The 2006 IPCC report used an estimated
recovery efficiency of just 20 percent. Even
Waste Management, the largest waste company in
the United States, has admitted that it is
impossible for them to reliably measure methane
emissions at their landfills or develop a
general model for estimating them.19

Recycling
saves 95 percent of the energy required to make
aluminum from ore.

If
the recycling rate were to reach 80% at the
current level of beverage container sales, nearly
3 million tons of greenhouse gas emissions would
be avoided. This is equivalent to taking nearly
2.4 million cars off the road for a full year.

U.S. Beverage Container Recycling Scorecard and
Report

In
1972, 53 million pounds of aluminum were recycled.
Today, we exceed that amount weekly.